Aroma compounds from plant materials are important constituents or ingredients for many food and beverage products. They may be present in plant materials used for producing a food or beverage product and carried directly over into the food or beverage product, or they may be recovered separately from plant material and added as an ingredient to a food or beverage composition. Well known aroma compounds of importance for the food and beverage industry are e.g. aroma compounds from coffee, tea, and cocoa. Aroma compounds present in plant material ingredients may be lost during processing of the plant material into a food or beverage product, volatile aroma compounds may e.g. be lost during thermal processing steps. To avoid this loss aroma compounds may e.g. be recovered from the plant material before the processing steps that leads to their loss, or during the initial processing, and may be added back after the processing steps which would otherwise have led to the loss of said aroma compounds. Methods for doing this are e.g. well known in the production of soluble coffee. During soluble coffee production coffee beans are extracted with water at elevated temperatures, e.g. up to between 120 and 180° C., which would normally lead to a loss of volatile aroma compounds that are important for the final soluble coffee products. These aroma compounds may be recovered from the coffee beans before the high temperature extraction, e.g. by steam stripping of the coffee beans, and may then be added back to the coffee extract after the high temperature extraction. Such methods are e.g. disclosed in WO 01/13735 and WO 99/52378. However, in some instances such methods may also recover aroma compounds that are undesired in the final product. For example, the volatile aroma fraction of roasted coffee beans, especially roasted Robusta coffee beans, contains some aroma compounds which may impart undesired aroma notes to the final product. The volatile fraction of roasted Robusta coffee bean aroma may e.g. impart notes to a final soluble coffee product that are often characterised as “harsh” or “rubber”, “woody”, “earthy”, “chemical” or “phenolic” notes. There is thus a need for methods of selectively removing such undesired compounds from plant material aromas, specifically from coffee aroma. Such methods would allow an improvement of the aroma of food and beverage products comprising aroma derived from plant material. Such methods may, for example, be used to improve the aroma of food and beverage products, e.g. soluble coffee products, comprising aroma derived from roasted robusta coffee beans. This could e.g. allow the use of higher proportions of robusta coffee beans in coffee blends used for producing soluble coffee without imparting the undesired aroma notes of robusta coffee to the final product.
Consequently, it is an object of the present invention to provide methods for producing aromatised food and beverage products wherein undesired aroma fractions are removed from plant material derived aroma fractions. Specifically, it is an object to provide methods for producing aromatised food and beverage products comprising coffee aroma, wherein undesired aroma compounds are removed from the coffee aroma. A further object is to provide methods for producing a food or beverage product, e.g. a soluble coffee product, comprising aroma from roasted robusta coffee beans, wherein undesired compounds are removed from the roasted robusta coffee bean aroma.